


I will come back from the dead for you

by stormcoming



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: 4x13, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fix-It, M/M, Quentin Coldwater Lives, mendings major and minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-23
Updated: 2021-02-23
Packaged: 2021-03-13 01:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29643708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stormcoming/pseuds/stormcoming
Summary: While Quentin is dying, he has a vision that saves his life.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 22
Kudos: 61





	I will come back from the dead for you

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Lazarov for betaing and lovely feedback! <3 
> 
> Thanks to Richard Siken for sending me fully feral.
> 
> (Title from _You Are Jeff_ , and a line stolen from _Litany In Which Certain Things Are Crossed Out_ )

*

*

Quentin is dying. 

He hadn’t come to the Mirror Realm to die, hadn’t thought it would end like this (liar), but it’s not a bad ending, all told (you fucking liar). It’s the right thing to do—

—The monster falls, but it’s Eliot lying among the dirt and leaves. 

He’s splintering into sparks; dying is the right thing to do—

—Eliot’s bleeding out onto the dirt and leaves and Quentin can’t look at him, can hardly speak. 

He’s swallowing magic, skin splitting from bone, shattering to atoms. A terrible thing. But the hero always pays the price. 

He locks eyes with Penny 23 and a vision slams them into shared consciousness: Penny 40 laughs, the fire burns, everyone’s crying and singing, and Quentin doesn't know which is worse. Quentin’s crying too, laughing and crying in a way that makes him, the real Quentin, feel even more hysterical. What the fuck is happening?

Quentin isn’t sparks, he isn’t dying. He’s dead. But, wait. Kady and Julia and Alice. Fogg and yet another Penny. He glances up at his Penny—the real one? Quentin’s not sure. Wait. Where’s—? 

His throat tightens. Eliot. Eliot’s here. Singing and crying and clumsily holding a peach to his lips. The fire burns, but it’s cold. When they first met, did Quentin meet the real Eliot, or the artifice? It’s the wrong way to look at it, he thinks, because the artifice _is_ Eliot. Not one mask, but many. You didn’t have to dig very deep to find the truth of him, because those masks weren’t concealing anything, those masks were everything. Didn’t have to dig because once Eliot made a place for you inside him, there was no going back. Once Eliot loved you, that was the only thing worth seeing. His eyes shining up at Quentin, glittering like sunlight on the surface of a lake. 

What Quentin sees right now is— 

Eliot’s grief like quicksand, a slower death than Quentin’s own. Eliot, clasping Alice’s hand. Eliot, crying. Eliot, the fallen soldier and war widow both. Quentin sees that the jagged shards obliterating his own flesh will eat away at Eliot, too, will over the years destroy him— 

He locks eyes with Penny 23 and the vision slams right out again. Quentin’s alone in his own head. Eliot’s gone. 

A rush of blood, a shatter of sparks. Quentin’s done magic already, so what’s a little more chaos? What’s another minor mending?

Penny’s there in a flash as his body snaps back into being a body, snaps back like he’s nothing more than a broken mug. There’s nothing minor about it, but nothing monumental, either. He’s just Quentin. He nearly wasn’t, but he is, and that’s all that matters. All that matters is that he’s spared Eliot a grief so sharp and thick it would’ve sunk him into the ground. The almost, could’ve, nearly of it unspools inside him with a shudder. Nausea lurches heavily in his throat. 

(Where’s Everett? Gone. Who cares, he’s not important.)

Eliot. He has to find Eliot. He thinks it, and everything blurs into place. Penny’s hand grips his shoulder and releases. Antiseptic magic stings his nostrils. The infirmary. Brakebills. “Go on,” says Penny, more gently than Quentin would’ve thought him capable before today. Eliot’s inside. Quentin looks back at Penny; tired and aching, scared and hopeful, and—

Quentin’s alive. There are mendings to be made, major and minor.

He opens the door. “Eliot,” he says, tired and aching, and— 

“Q,” Eliot says, scared and hopeful, and—

It all snaps into place. 


End file.
